Newly qualified social workers (NQSW) from BAME backgrounds made up 53 per cent of ASYE failures in 2020/21, despite accounting for just 26 per cent of those registered under the programme.

Meanwhile, white social workers accounted for 47 per cent of fails and 60 per cent of registrants, according to workforce development body Skills for Care’s annual report on the 2020/21 programme.

“This is a serious finding, and most employers acknowledge that there is work for them to do in embedding proactive approaches to overcoming inequalities and addressing systemic racism,” it states, adding it must be central to the ASYE process.

Citing examples of good practice surrounding diversifying the children’s social work workforce, Skills for Care, which is funded by the Department for Education, notes some employers’ focus on recruiting men from ethnically diverse backgrounds and implementing risk assessments for staff from BAME groups.

However, the report also states: “There is a sense that the focus is on equipping NQSWs with the skills and knowledge to work inclusively with service users. While this is clearly vitally important, there appears to be less attention given to the lived experience of social workers from BAME backgrounds going through the ASYE and to pre-empting disadvantages where these may occur.”

When asked about their experiences during the ASYE year, some BAME NQSWs said that the language skills and cultural knowledge and experience of different team members are appreciated. 

However, others questioned caseload allocations and “mistaken assumptions” that because a worker is from a particular ethnic community, they are the “go to” expert.

“This is indicative of the wider challenge in addressing anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practice across the whole workforce. It should not therefore be seen merely as a problem within ASYE programme activity,” the report states.

Recommendations made in the report include:

• Ensure that NQSWs and supervisors have the necessary training and support to enable them to call out racist practices.

• Ensure that NQSWs from black and ethnic minority backgrounds are linked into peer support groups if this is their choice.

• Encourage “hard to have” conversations, where individuals are not afraid to say the wrong thing and learn from the ensuing dialogue, take place at the outset of the ASYE and keep them on supervision and team meeting agendas throughout.

• Consider how to capture and analyse data around ethnicity, recruitment, achievement and attrition, and incorporate this, along with feedback from NQSWs, into the quality assurance process.

• Ask how the ASYE programme can develop an ethos of allyship, and what more action you can take to tackle conscious and unconscious biases that result in black, Asian and ethnic minority NQSWs having worse outcomes than white colleagues on the programme.

Responding to the report, Steve Crocked, vice president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Social Care, said: “That BAME NQSWs experience disproportionately higher failure rates than their white counterparts is a serious and worrying finding that employers will be seeking to address. Diversity in the workplace matters because representation matters, this is true for both direct work with families and at a senior level. 

“It is also important for children and young people to see that they too can aspire to a career in children’s services by seeing themselves reflected in the professionals who have such an important impact on their lives. We must therefore do all we can to not only encourage diversity within our workforce but also to create a culture that allows everyone to reach their full potential.”